


Wilder Impulses

by thegoodreverend



Series: Strange Men South of Colter [2]
Category: Red Dead Redemption, Red Dead Redemption (Video Games), Red Dead Redemption 2
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Hurt feelings, Idiots in Love, Multi, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, i'm not sure there's an actual plot here it's just a short thing, john is an impossible mess at all times, rancher ot3 au returns, reconciliation with past lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 06:02:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17218346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegoodreverend/pseuds/thegoodreverend
Summary: Arthur sat at the table with his fists clenched white-knuckled while Abigail looked out the kitchen window with her back turned towards him. Jack had been in bed for hours. They still hadn’t spoken about what they both knew to be true – it sat heavy between them, occupying the empty seat at the table. John hadn’t just left.John had run.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently, I can't stop writing for this fandom. I have another totally separate AU that I'll probably be posting soon too, because this is my life now. Again, no beta - ride hard or go home, y'all.
> 
> Originally I thought this could stand alone, and I guess in a way it can if you just want to go into this knowing that Arthur and John meet later in life, having both been in Dutch's gang at different times, and that they now live with Abigail together after retiring from their life of crime. Reading the first in the series will help it a lot, though. If you feel like reading through eight chapters of pain and emotional garbage, hit up the first work in the series!

John left.

It had been on the pretense of going to Valentine about cattle, which Arthur suspected was bullshit because it was the first time he’d heard about it and a quick glance at Abigail told him that she hadn’t either. Neither of them said much about it, though, and let him ride off without fuss. For about five days Arthur had even been glad to be rid of him – he’d been ornery as sin and lashed out at the smallest provocation, tightly wound and pacing. He’d been especially hard on Jack, who had never been overly inclined to the type of physical and admittedly roguish life that both Arthur and John were predisposed to. He helped around the ranch, but in his free time only wanted to read. Abigail was thrilled by that. Arthur often felt almost awed, watching this small person so excited about stories in a way he never was at that age, and like Abigail imagined that the world was well within Jack’s grasp even at eight years old. And for the most part John felt the same way, except when he was being a moody son of a bitch. Then Jack’s bookishness became an annoyance, and John got short with him when he didn’t want to go fishing or take a ride. Jack rarely wanted to do either of these things with John.

John had been in a moody way for weeks before he left and in retrospect Arthur felt he should have seen it coming, as it seemed to be the particularly domestic and fatherly things that put him in a worse mood. As much as he wanted to blame himself, Arthur _had_ told him to knock it off a few times, and received only a glare in response. They had been god honest glares, too. He and Abigail had barely bickered at all since his attitude started which meant that John was actually angry. Abigail and John would argue about the color of the sky for fun, which had taken Arthur a little time to adjust to, but now it made him more uncomfortable when they were silent. He exchanged awkward glances with Jack whenever it happened, occasionally crossing his eyes and sticking his tongue out to distract him at a tense dinner table. 

While all this was happening, John’d even had the audacity to ask Arthur if he thought Abigail would be mad if he took a few bounties again. As if it had gone over well the first time, when John had simply announced to them at the kitchen table that he was doing it and taken off immediately, and then for some reason acted surprised when he’d gotten back and Abigail hadn’t spoken to him. Surprised when Arthur had told him she’d been in tears for days after he’d left and he ought to use his brain more often. After thinking at least he had thought to ask first, Arthur had laughed and shook his head, and said Abigail would be furious, just like him, and that John needed to sort himself out. 

So when he left for a week, it felt like something of a relief, and they hoped he’d made up the excuse just to go and cool off and pull himself out of whatever funk he was in. Arthur recognized it to some extent. The transition from a wild outlaw to a domesticated  rancher was a stark and painful one and difficult to adjust to, mentally speaking. He had faith John could pull through it. The kid loved his family, and he was emotional and wild but he was good at his core. A week would be good for him. 

After two weeks, Arthur sat at the table with his fists clenched white-knuckled while Abigail looked out the kitchen window with her back turned towards him. Jack had been in bed for hours. They still hadn’t spoken about what they both knew to be true – it sat heavy between them, occupying the empty seat at the table. John hadn’t just left.

John had run.

“You want me to go after him?” he asked. He wanted to. There was a part of him that had long been dormant that wanted to run after John and beat him senseless. He’d never really had that feeling before with John, and it made him feel sick.

Abigail laughed. The sound was desperate, and dumped cold water over the spark of Arthur’s younger self. “And leave me to run this place?”

“Abigail-”

“I do, Arthur. I want you to go bring him home. If I could send you after him and know you’d be safe I’d do it in a heartbeat, but I don’t want you caught up in whatever idiot mess he’s made for himself because I can’t do this alone.”

He’d gone to her, then, and put his hand on her back until she turned into him, and he’d held her. He’d whispered reassurances to her that he wouldn’t leave her alone. John had made a choice, and if there were consequences he’d have to live with them – as badly as Arthur wanted to go after him, and as badly as he imagined Abigail wanted him to, too, it wouldn’t do to have both of them gone. Abigail was right. She often was.

Abigail didn’t ask him why John had left, or blame herself, or say much of anything at all. She just cried against his chest and he absorbed all of it. As much as it hurt, it was cathartic. Abigail often ate her hurts like he did and mulled over them, and then spat bullets like John although her shots were usually meant to divert attention. To have her crying against him in such a plain and open way – at the fear of being alone, at the heartbreak of being _left,_ at all the things that hurt Arthur in the same way – almost validated his own sense of betrayal. He’d been sitting on the word for a few days. Betrayal was a strong one and he didn’t like to use it because it reminded him of days with Dutch being made to feel guilty for nothing. But this, Arthur thought, was an appropriate place for it. He took Abigail’s head between his hands and kissed her cheeks, and didn’t bother assuring her John would be back. Arthur didn’t know if he would, and he wasn’t in the habit of lying to Abigail. When they fell into bed that night they clung to each other, and he’d held her in a crushing embrace through the night like he could make up for John’s absence that way. He knew he couldn’t, but that she appreciated the effort. He knew because when she kissed his neck and dug her fingers into his back felt the same way.

Adjusting to life without John was painful. He felt like he was missing his left arm, and figured Abigail must feel the same way. The increased work wasn’t too bad – Jack was getting big enough to help more, and when he really needed it Sadie could spare a ranch hand or Charles would come and stay for a few days. It was mostly that they’d all gotten used to functioning in tandem, the three of them. They’d learned each other’s quirks and patterns, learned each other’s faults so they could supplement them. It reminded him a little of when he was younger with Dutch and Hosea, operating like a well-oiled machine, and it was comforting and wonderful after so long alone – but now he felt staggered. He found himself standing in the barn, sometimes, wondering how to perform basic tasks without the backdrop of John’s lighthearted mockery. His absence was a missing limb.

“Uncle Arthur?”

He looked down at Jack, who sat on a rock absently mutilating a couple blades of tall grass while Arthur fished for dinner. They boy had long since put his rod down – Jack didn’t seem to mind accompanying Arthur on any outdoor excursions, but he never fished for long. Arthur suspected that the way the fish gasped when it broke surface bothered him because he was a good kid who didn’t like to hurt anything. John would always mock him for it, jab at Jack like he did with everybody else. There was no venom in it, but Jack was sensitive. John would sigh and make a big deal of it when Jack would walk over to a rock or a tree and read instead of fish, and live right through the way the boy pouted and looked away despondently, or notice but not know what to do about it. Before John had left Arthur thought one day he’d have to talk to him about giving the kid some space to be himself. At least he didn’t have to have that conversation now.

“Yeah?”

“Is pa coming back?”

Arthur felt like he was being strangled from the inside, hearing Jack’s tone. The nervousness there. He and Abigail hadn’t really talked about anything beyond practicality, like how they’d present the absence to anyone who asked, who would do what chores, how long they would wait before they assumed he was dead or as-good-as. They both knew John in a way that Jack did not, which meant they didn’t have to talk about their own concerns and fears and heartbreaks because they were identical. But Jack craved reassurance – Jack only knew that his father was gone, and that his two other care-givers were upset about it and so it must not be right.

Arthur sighed a little. “I don’t know, Jack. I hope so.”

“Why’d he go?”

“I been wonderin’ that myself. Reckon he just… missed somethin’ he used to have. It’s hard to say. Your dad’s real emotional about things.”

“Do you think it was because of me?”

The fishing rod was abandoned and Arthur was kneeling on the ground before he realized it. He must have looked as intense as he felt because Jack seemed to shrink back for a few moments, until Arthur put a firm hand on his shoulder. “Your daddy’s out there chasin’ ghosts like a fool, it don’t have nothin’ to do with you. It don’t have anything to do with any of us, and especially not you. You understand?”

Arthur want ed to say a lot more. He want ed to tell Jack that his father  was a coward for running away from his responsibilities,  selfish  for entertaining wild fantasies about his past life. He  wanted to tell Jack that his father  was weak for acting on them, because Arthur had  once  had the same thoughts and fought through them even when he was all by himself. But Jack looked near tears, and it wouldn’t do to have the boy more resentful of his father than he would be if John never came back.  This was a conversation Arthur would have to sit on for years before it was the right time . So he just motioned his hand with permission, because the boy held tension like he wanted to leap at Arthur, and held him close when he did. 

“No matter what,” he said quietly, “your daddy loves you, even if he don’t show it right. And your momma and me, we ain’t goin’ nowhere. I promise you, boy.” 

He felt Jack nod, and  as he put his hand on the back of Jack’s head he thought it was good Abigail hadn’t asked him to go  after John . He might have strangled  the man to death instead. 

When he and Jack got home, Jack presented his mother with a chain of flowers built more expertly than the ones he’d made  a few weeks prior because he’d been practicing , and Arthur had kissed her forehead before going out to clean the fish he’d caught. They could make do without John Marston, Arthur thought,  and he was bitter about it . He had spent a long time trying not to be  that way about wrongs done to him, but this one seemed like it deserved it. He’d rather be furious  than heartbroken  at the empty spot at the dinner table, the gaping void at his side in bed, the itching and painful sensation of a thing that had once been a part of his whole self and now wasn’t. 

Of course, w hen  John came back he did it like it was no big deal. Like he’d been gone for a few hours, and not six months. There were new scars, and he hadn’t shaved or cut his hair, and he looked like a drowned cat as he stabled his horse. Arthur watched incredulously, gripping the pitchfork in his hand tight as John disappeared into the barn. 

“Should I go?” Charles said, after a long moment of silence.

“Why?” Arthur asked. He felt like he couldn’t control the way he slammed the point of the pitchfork into the ground, and Charles laughed a little.

“Yeah. I’ll see you around. Don’t murder anybody, Arthur.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Charles left, nodding at John as he rode away. Left him to feel hyper-aware of John walking past him and into the house, pointedly avoiding eye-contact as he passed. He’d seen Arthur watch him ride up, seen him turn away, and had the good sense not to speak. Arthur went back to work and did it furiously, trying his best to ignore John’s presence. He heard the crash inside the house that accompanied Abigail realizing John was home, the muffled noises of her laying into him without restraint, John’s attempts to defend himself. Arthur hoped that whatever she threw, she smashed his nose. 

When the door opened again it was Jack coming out of the house, accompanied by a brief burst of volume before the door closed. He walked with his shoulders hunched and a book clutched in his hand, the dog trailing after him, and Arthur couldn’t help but think that he deserved a lot more than John, sometimes. Poor kid.

“Hey, Jack,” he called, setting down the pitchfork to lean on the fence. Jack stopped and looked at him, paler than usual. “Wanna go fishing?”

Jack nodded immediately.

Abigail and John had hashed it out by the time he and Jack got back, and Arthur bit back his impulse to feel angry that they were on good terms already. She was furious, still, and John was thoroughly shamed, but they were speaking in a normal tone and within an arm’s reach of each other without Abigail trying to strangle him. He’d shaved, and bathed, and looked just about how Arthur remembered. As he passed John without acknowledging him, kissing Abigail’s cheek on his way to clean the fish, he supposed that the benefit of John and Abigail’s tumultuous way of dealing with things had its perks. They worked out their issues immediately and plain. Let all their hurts rise to the surface so they could scab and heal. Arthur needed more time to sit with his pains, process them internally and determine if it was worth bothering anybody over which they usually weren’t, and sometimes they never really went away.  As he closed the back door, Arthur heard John apologizing to his son. Jack’s answer was too quiet for him to hear, but Arthur expected it was a dismissive and insincere _it’s fine_. 

He stayed angry for a week, slept outside like he had when Abigail and Jack had first arrived and he wasn’t sure of his place in everything. Abigail didn’t bother him about it. She spoke to him softly when they were alone in the house and gripped his hand, and didn’t try to convince him he shouldn’t be mad. She was good at letting John deal with consequences. So he stayed mad, working side by side with a man he wasn’t speaking to and barely looked at, and he took Jack out riding whenever he seemed overwhelmed, and at the end of the week thought that if he didn’t get some space between him and John he might snap and beat him within an inch of his life.

“I’m going hunting,” he told Abigail, soft and low after a day’s worth of work. She was working on dinner, and John was finishing things up in the stable. “I oughta be back in the morning.”

“You’ll have Jack terrified, runnin’ off after – after everything,” she said, looking at the potatoes she was peeling with too much conviction.

“Yeah, well. I’ll have him terrified if I kill his father too, so this seems like a better option.”

“Is it gonna make you tolerate him easier when you get back?”

“Hope so.”

“I just wanna get back to normal, Arthur. If you need space you take it, but leave whatever you’re feelin’ right now out there unless you plan on talkin’ about it when you get back. Just tell the boy so he don’t get nervous.”

Arthur nodded, and kissed her when she looked up at him.  W hen he told Jack,  he didn’t look nervous at all. He’d only nodded and said  _okay_ , which surprised him. On the other hand, he wasn’t John and the boy knew that -  Jack didn’t have a problem riding or fishing with Arthur, after all. So he  ruffled the kid’s hair when he said goodbye,  grabbed his bag and his rifle and bow, and saddled up his horse. He ignored John’s questions  about where he was going as he passed him on his way out of the stable. 

The mountains made him feel strangely secure. Even as he passed the cabin, where he hadn’t been since they’d moved into the house properly, he felt tension leave him. A tree had crushed it sometime last year and a family of raccoons had made it their home. He imagined the boards that remained were still stained with his blood. He wandered deep until it grew cold and he had to put on his coat. The horse didn’t complain. She had a name, finally. Jack had wanted to name her just after they’d met, so Arthur had let him and he’d named her Viviane after a character in one of his stories. Arthur thought it fit her well enough.

He would worry about hunting in the morning, he decided – the wandering was what he needed now. Time to think of nothing else but what was immediately around him, to trust his loyal friend to navigate the rocky terrain below them as they ventured off the path and into the deeper woods. The quiet faded deep into a familiar chorus of birds and wildlife, the creaking of branches. It comforted him. It distracted him from John for as long as it took for him to stop and make a fire and set up a tent. For as long as it took John to find him.

When  Rachel comes up on his camp, he almost shoots before he recognizes  the thoroughbred and John’s scarred face, eyes bright and angry.  And then he almost curses  in relief , almost gives John the satisfaction of acknowledgment, before silently begging God for some kind of distraction. A bear. A pack of wolves. Anything to put off having to deal with John Marston,  who he so desperately wanted to escape . He  knew that Abigail  must have tried to get  him to leave him alone, and failed – he appreciated the effort,  and wished she’d thrown something at him to knock him out . 

“I’m gettin’ fed up with this bullshit, Arthur,” John said, dismounting and half-storming over to him. Arthur couldn’t hold back a small and bitter laugh – John Marston, complaining about bullshit. Whether he was a hypocrite or an idiot, Arthur couldn’t say. “You can’t just run away from me.”

“’Course not, can’t imagine any full grown man runnin’ away anything.”

“You can’t keep this attitude up and expect everything to work.” 

“You got some nerve, John.”

“Jesus Christ, I _came back_.” 

“I wish you’d stayed gone!” Arthur roared, and the forest went quiet. He was on his feet before he realized it and staring John down. To his credit, John didn’t move. He didn’t look afraid, which was frustrating. “I have half a mind to beat you senseless and just might if you don’t _leave me_ _the hell_ _alone_.” 

“Beat me, then! You been avoidin’ me all week, don’t see how a night in the woods is gonna make a difference so you might as well just beat me and get it over with. Ain’t like I don’t deserve it.”

A rthur felt his fists clench, staring into John’s defiant face,  and thought that he’d never outright punched John but by god did he  want to. Maybe defiant wasn’t the right word. Stubborn, accepting, mixed with the anticipation of pain.  A stubborn  grimace. Arthur felt every tense muscle in his body starting to quiver, and hated that all he could think was how much he’d missed that stupid  scarred  face  and how badly he’d been hurt by him . His eyes pricked with angry tears, choked with frustration and the bitter taste of betrayal as he grabbed the back of John’s neck in a bruising grip and crashed their mouths together. 

It seemed better than fighting. He  w ould never outright hit John, anyway.

He fucked John hard and left marks on his back and shoulders, made him cry out and drag his nails against Arthur’s thighs, and kept up the pace until John couldn’t make any noise at all. When he was finished he lay on his back and felt his heart pounding, and his brain felt raw and full of white noise. John stayed where he was. He looked limp and like he was struggling to breathe properly, flushed down to his chest and as much sated as he was used and exhausted. Arthur hated himself for the first time in a while. Hated that he’d missed John so much and that the sound of his rasping voice was a comfort, that he couldn’t rely on his anger to carry him through this with indifference. Hated that he didn’t have the strength to just tell him he’d broken his heart even if he had come back, and he especially hated that he known even through his anger that he’d forgive John within a week as soon as he’d seen him ride back home. The pain of John leaving them and the relief of that limb returning to its rightful place sat side by side, and he had to deal with it.

“I’m sorry,” John mumbled, voice more hoarse than usual. He groped blindly for his abandoned shirt, jostling the too-small tent in the process, and wiped himself off with it. “I wasn’t plannin’ on leaving, Arthur, it just _happened,_ and then all of the sudden-”

“Don’t,” Arthur growled. “I don’t care. I don’t care why you left or why you came back. I don’t wanna talk about it. It is what it is and you gotta let me be pissed off.”

He felt more than saw John nod, felt his arm brush against his as he rolled onto his back,  heard him groan a little as his body stretched. Arthur bit back emotion as he let John intertwine their fingers, and couldn’t tell what it was. 

“That was your one time, John. That’s all you get. You understand?”

“Yeah, I understand.” 

Between the two of them, they brought down two fine looking deer to bring home. They moved in tandem, like they had before John left, and Arthur resolutely did not think about the time in which they hadn’t. Best to treat it like it never happened at all, he decided. He wasn’t sure he’d ever have the vocabulary or the ability to talk to John about all the ways in which he’d been hurt and disappointed, and he imagined John knew already anyway. Best to let things go back to how they were, as much as they could.

John didn’t try to make him laugh or touch him. They rode side by side in relative silence. The softer parts of them could come back, Arthur told himself. It was alright for those to take more time. John and Arthur rode past the gate of the property only an hour or so after the sun was truly risen, and tried not to feel guilty as he watched Abigail leaning on the porch wrapped in her shawl and gripping her coffee. He didn’t know where the guilt came from.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters posted today - chapters 3 and 4 coming shortly!

As bad as he felt, John knew he couldn’t blame anybody for their reaction when he got back. All things considered, things returned to normal pretty quickly, and he supposed he got lucky with that. He imagined Arthur in particular had latched on to betrayals of his unlimited trust a lot more vehemently when he was younger. Within three months, they were all acting like it had never happened at all.

John hadn’t actually done much when he was away. He’d taken a few bounties, and gotten too drunk with too much regularity. He might have held up a few travelers, but he was pretty sure they were highwaymen and so it seemed justified. He’d gambled, and roamed, and even though he’d missed his family terribly it had been amazing. It wasn’t like he’d robbed any banks or stagecoaches, he didn’t join up with another gang. He’d just taken a little vacation. Just blown off a little steam, because his life had shifted dramatically in a way he wasn’t truly ready to deal with even though he was living it with three people he’d gladly try and fist fight an oncoming steam engine for.

Arthur hadn’t been interested in his explanations, although Abigail had listened to him. They weren’t justifications, and he didn’t really believe that anybody would forgive him because of them. Abigail had understood even though she was mad, and let him know about it, because she always did. That’s how they were with each other – they fought like wild cats and then listened to the reasons why and forgive. It was how they’d always been. She’d only told him, quiet after they’d aired everything, that he should think of a better way to relieve the stress of an adult life. He wasn’t a child running with a gang of wild dogs anymore. John had fought back the urge to say something in his defense, but they’d been through all his points, and so he just nodded and told her he would.

He knew the reasons he left were idiotic. He was a full grown man with a family. It didn’t matter how badly he missed his old life, how strong the itch to be on the road and the craving for the adrenaline that came with it were. It shouldn’t matter, compared to his son and wife and partner and the shared responsibilities he had with them. The problem was that it _did_ matter, because even thinking that it shouldn’t made his skin itch. When he looked at Arthur, he wondered if he’d ever gotten those kinds of impulses and couldn’t imagine he had. Arthur was too steady for this wildness, he thought. Arthur was always in control of himself. So maybe it made more sense that Abigail understood, because Abigail had that wildness in her too, and Arthur didn’t care to be bothered with his explanation.

But within three months, things got back to normal. They got back to normal, and another year passed, and John took out his wilder impulses physically. Throwing his whole body into his work, into making up for hurts with Abigail and Arthur in bed, into hard rides around the valley seeing to his responsibilities. He thought he was doing a pretty damn good job.

Of course, he was wrong. Self awareness had never been a strong suit, although he noticed Arthur giving him sidelong glances. After the first few, he realized how hard he was being on Jack  for next to nothing , and found himself flustered with an inability to apologize or explain to the boy. Then he noticed how pervasively he thought of the road, how much his fingers itched to grip the reigns and let Rachel take him far away into wild places.  And then he noticed Abigail clutching  nervously  at her dress when she stared at him, whenever she thought he wasn’t aware, and he felt the way she clung to him before she fell asleep. He didn’t know what was wrong with him. 

He tried to distract himself, tried to work harder, be better – be more like Arthur. He tried until he exhausted himself, and didn’t seem to make any progress at all. He fell asleep angry and feeling trapped, and furious at himself for it. He woke up that way too.

One morning in May, he woke up earlier than he usually did. It took him a few minutes to recognize that he was hearing Arthur’s voice. He was using his calm tone, the one he used on the horses when they got spooked, which coming from anybody else would be a little patronizing but Arthur held a higher opinion of horses than he did of the majority of humanity.

“-send a hand out. Tilly wants to stay with you, it’ll give her a break from all that hollerin’ Sadie does.”

“I like that you already asked.”

“Had to figure out what the options were before I suggested. Hell, I bet Charles’d stay, too, if you asked him. It’ll only be a couple of weeks. And I’ll be there, keep an eye on him. I was gonna head down that way anyway, I got an old friend I ain’t seen for a long time and figure I gotta take advantage of the timing.”

“Nothin’… y’know, nothin’ bad?”

“Nothin’ bad. Visit a friend, see if I can find that albino moose I saw last time I was ridin’ around if nobody’s gotten to him yet. Then right back.” 

“You think it’ll help?”

“Yeah. It’s gotta.”

“Okay. I can do a couple weeks.”

John blinked into his pillow tiredly. The voices had filtered in through his door from the living room, and so it wasn’t a total surprise when Arthur walked in and threw an empty canvas bag at him. He let it hit his face and he groaned.

“Good, you’re awake. Get packed,” Arthur chuckled, leaning on the door.

“Packed for what?”

“You’n me are takin’ a trip. Real warm and real cold, pack right ‘cause you ain’t wearin’ my clothes.”

“It ain’t even light out yet.”

“Just shut up and get dressed. Abigail’s makin’ coffee.”

“What about the-”

“ _Pack_.”

John groaned and pushed himself out of bed, well aware that Arthur watched him for a few more minutes to make sure he was following instructions, much the same way Abigail did with the dog when it crept too close to the table at dinner. He ignored the look and stumbled over to his dresser, and started throwing clothes and supplies the bag. He strapped on his gun belt when he was finished. Arthur didn’t say anything even thought he saw it happen before he left John to his on devices, probably because two weeks on the road was plenty of time for something to go terribly wrong, and you didn’t want to be unarmed when it did.

Abigail kissed him and slipped an arm around his waist when he came to stand beside her and wait for the coffee. He heard Arthur talking quietly to Jack – about how they were going to leave, but only for a few weeks because they had to go visit Arthur’s friend. Jack didn’t question whether or not they would return, and judging by Arthur’s laugh and the _I’ll bring you somethin’ if you behave_ only asked if he could have a present. John wondered if Jack would have acted the same if he’d been the one to tell him. He always seemed to act sweeter on Arthur.

Abigail shifted to pour coffee, and John let his fingers trace her back. “Did Strong’n’Silent say where I’m goin’.”

“Somewhere in Lemoyne, then up north,” Abigail yawned, and handed him a cup. “He promised it’d be a quick trip.”

“Two weeks.”

“No more.”

“No more,” John agreed, and the way she smiled at him hurt. This was a test, he thought, and it was an easy one to pass if you weren’t an idiot.

Arthur’s steady pace was accompanied by the shuffle of children’s feet, and John turned in time to see Jack stumble blearily from the hallway. Up earlier than he normally was and clearly feeling it. John downed the last of his coffee and lifted the boy up when he got near, holding him close. It was much, much easier to hold his son than it was to talk to him. Jack looped his arms around his father’s shoulders and John thought he might fall asleep again as Arthur accepted a cup of coffee from Abigail. Arthur and Abigail didn’t speak. They rarely spoke, they only stood comfortably together. Sometimes, John still felt smug when he thought about how nervous Arthur had been to meet her and how right he’d been about their getting on well.

“You boys want breakfast?” Abigail asked. John tried to open his mouth, before Arthur cut in.

“Best we hit the road. I gotta stop at Sadie’s first, let her know we’re gone, so Tilly and whoever she sends can get here in a timely manner.”

John turned his face away so Abigail didn’t see the relief there, both at the fact that Arthur had a perfectly reasonable reason why they didn’t have time and because he had never gotten used to her awful cooking despite the frequency with which he ate it. He’d always been a bad liar.

They’d left after that, Arthur on Viviane and John on Rachel, and they’d stopped to let Sadie know and say hello folks, and then gotten back on the road. Arthur was silent in the way he got when he was thinking, usually before he’d disappear to a remote area of the property to scribble away in his journal. It took John a full five minutes to give in to the urge to ask him what he was thinking.

“Nothin’,” Arthur said. “Just thinkin’ I could probably kick your ass racin’ to Owanjila.”

“I ain’t too sure about that, old man,” John laughed, gripping his reigns. He was ready when Arthur gave him a grin that had probably melted a hundred hearts in his youth and took off like a bullet.

It took a few days to reach Rhodes because they kept stopping to fish and hunt and do next to nothing, and while John loved that part he grew more and more uncomfortable the closer they got to their destination. His six-month stint away from the family had not taken him into Lemoyne for a good reason. He preferred drier climates – while he’d definitely been to the south with Dutch, he’d spent most of his days running with the gang in the west, and Big Valley was about as damp as he liked to get. Winters were too cold there, but it could be worse. It could be a fucking swamp full of small-minded backwoods hillbillies stuck forty years in the past.

“Might try sayin’ that louder,” Arthur had drawled, voice dripping in sarcasm as they passed by the train station. “Not sure everybody heard you the first time.”

“Like you don’t agree.”

“Sure, but unlike you I don’t think I’m lookin’ for a fight right now. We are dramatically outnumbered and I’m old and outta practice.”

John grunted, and followed Arthur to the general store. It was just as humid and disgusting inside as it was out. “Y’ain’t that old. Hell, if you can hunt a bear you can fight a buncha rednecks.”

“What do you think huntin’ bears involves, exactly?”

“Arthur?”

Arthur and John jumped and flinched at the same time. The voice was familiar, and John knew who it was and that it was safe even as habit forced his hand to his gun. Arthur blinked dumbly, stuck in the same movement, and John then grinned at the owner of the voice. Simon Pearson stood behind the counter, returning Arthur’s expression. He blinked as though struck by the time he realized who Arthur was standing with.

“John? You- how? Boys!” Pearson laughed, and came around the counter with his arms outstretched.

Arthur had started to laugh, and embraced him when he got close enough. “Pearson, Jesus. You scared the shit outta me.”

“You’re tellin’ me, I thought I lost it. Here I was thinkin’ you were dead. And you too, John – Christ, John Marston. Look at you, you washed your god damn hair. I’d think I was seein’ ghosts if that weren’t the case.”

“Kinda feel like I oughta be offended,” John said, and gave the man a hug when he was turned to. Arthur was still grinning wide.

“You should, you were a filthy son of a bitch. The two of you, here of all places - how in the hell do you two even know each other?”

“Coincidence,” Arthur chuckled.

“The god damn odds,” Pearson shook his head, and went to lean back against the counter. “I thought you both were dead, it’s been so long since I heard anything.”

“As good as,” John said.

Arthur scoffed and shot him a small glare. “Just behavin’ ourselves.”

“I would hope so,” Pearson grinned, and looked at John. “And Abigail?”

“She’s fine. So’s Jack – we – it’s a long story, but we’re all fine. Rentin’ Arthur’s property up north a ways, north of Strawberry,” John supplied, suddenly feeling a little sheepish. The last he’d seen him, Pearson had been told that Jack and Abigail had left him for good. Pearson, however, didn’t seem the least bit surprised that Abigail was still in the picture.

“Fine country. Arthur Morgan with _property_. I’d never have thought. What you boys doin’ down this way?”

“Visitin’ Hosea,” Arthur said. “Ain’t been here since – well, since the last time I saw you.”

“Marker ain’t there no more.”

“Figured as much. Coupla sticks tied together, can’t expect ‘em to last long.”

“Shit. Well, bet you’re lookin’ for supplies, huh. Oh- Oh, wait right here. I got somethin’ for you, Arthur. Didn’t ever expect to need to do this,” he laughed to himself, and suddenly was gone. They heard a creaking that implied he was heading up stairs.

Still looking incredulous and thrilled, Arthur turned his gaze to John. “ _Pearson_?”

“I guess so,” John laughed.

“Makes me wonder who else you know from the old days that we might have in common.”

“I’d a told you, but you never asked.”

“Guess I didn’t. Christ, Pearson.”

The man in question came back from wherever he’d gotten to, brushing past curtains and carrying a box. “Figured you’d want this more than me, Arthur. Maybe you too John. Most of it’s Dutch’s things, some of it’s Hosea’s he still had in his tent. I took this shit from camp when I left after – well. After the news broke about Dutch and we tore down things for good. I got more, but it’s tucked away. I’ll post it to you in Strawberry if you don’t mind me writin’ to you.”

“That’d be fine, Pearson, thank you. Goin’ by Callahan nowadays if you write. Safety first,” Arthur smiled, taking the box from him. John had already started selecting food from the shelves by the time Arthur thought to add, “This one’s still goin’ by Marston though, like the fool he is.”

“Never one for caution, were you, John.”

“No sir,” John grinned, and felt a little wolfish.


	3. Chapter 3

“Grimshaw?”

“Died a little before we robbed that train. She got sick, never could figure out what it was.”

“Swanson?”

“When I was younger. Dunno where the hell he got off to, sad bastard.”

"Now see, him, I read about him in a paper. He's back in New York, got his faith back and everything."

"Well, shit."

“Never woulda expected,” Arthur shook his head, scraping beans from the bottom of the can. John watched him eat from across the camp fire. They were nestled in the woods a ways outside of Rhodes and Arthur's nostalgic mood from earlier had lingered, and John was taking advantage of it.

“Woulda mentioned everybody earlier if it ever seemed like you cared to talk about it.”

“Guess I don’t usually.”

Life with the gang must seem like a lifetime ago to him, John thought. It was just yesterday for John - four years away from the gang wasn’t that long in the scheme of things, compared to the extended he’d spent with them. And he really hadn’t processed all of it yet, especially not Dutch. Dutch, who he’d made eye-contact with as he’d fallen to the ground and died. Dutch, who had rescued him and treated him with more respect than anybody else had in his entire life up until that point. He wondered if Dutch had done the same for Arthur.

“Y’know,” John said, “If you hadn’t left, we’d a met sooner. Left the gang, I mean. Imagine the two of us, runnin’ around like hellfire. Though can’t say I can imagine _you_ any younger than you were when I met you. Maybe you wouldn’t’ve been any fun.”

It was bait, laid in the hope that Arthur would let loose some story that would prove John wrong. Something – anything. He wasn’t sure why he wanted that, whether it was so he could sit back and feel smug because Arthur wasn’t all that better than him, or so he could feel reassured by the fact that once Arthur had been wild and unconstrained and he’d settled into some calm beast and was content with a quiet life, and that meant John could settle too. Or maybe just because he’d never really talked about his life before he’d left the gang and John desperately wanted to know about it. Regardless, Arthur didn't take the bait to prove him wrong. John wasn’t sure he even saw it.

“I suppose we would’ve caused a riot as long as one of Micah’s plans didn’t get me killed before we got the chance. How old were you when you joined up, anyway?”

“Dunno exactly. Fourteen, I figure.”

“Dutch musta found you right after I left.”

“Musta done. Didn’t talk much about anything before me, though. Kinda surprises me now lookin’ back on it considerin’ how much Dutch liked to talk. Just a buncha vague references to people who didn’t have enough faith.”

Arthur gave an aborted chuckle. “For a fella who wouldn’t believe in God if he came down from on high to deliver divine proclamation, Dutch sure did like talkin’ about faith.”

“He did,” John agreed, and he couldn’t help smiling. “And – shit, what was that man’s name. That author he damn near fawned over.”

“Damn _near_? He worshiped the man. Miller.”

“Yeah. Christ, he was a strange one. Won’t be another Dutch van der Linde for a hundred years, and the world’s probably better for it. Can I ask you somethin’?”

“Why bother askin’, you’re gonna do it anyway.”

“You miss him, ever?”

“Sure,” Arthur said, and the lack of hesitation surprised him. “Don’t you?”

“Well, I mean – yeah, I suppose I do. I just kinda feel like I ought not to, considerin’.”

Arthur sniffed, and set his dinner down. His concentration instead shifted to the coffee he was drinking. He was looking at it the way he did when he was mulling over something emotional – Arthur didn’t think he was very good with words or emotion, but John disagreed. He always mulled. He rarely ever exploded or make a big deal out of nothing like John did. Always talked about things precisely, as long as he had time to contemplate. John was a little jealous of that, being nothing but impulse himself.

“Dutch was a sick man,” Arthur said, finally. “Way I see it, he couldn’t help actin’ the way he did. Don’t mean he didn’t care, it just got lost somewhere along the way. I figure it always was that he had two parts to him. One that cared and one that was a selfish cunnin’ son of a bitch. And if things was goin’ well it was balanced, but as soon as they went bad… and then with folks like Micah around, y’know. He just caught up in wantin’ to feel… I don’t know. Important. It made him sick in the head. Made it hard for him to tell when he weren’t keepin his baser impulses in control.”

“Guess you’re right. I always wanna think he weren’t the same by the time… by the time everything happened back home, like he started off good and then changed to somethin’ bad. But I don’t think that’s true. Whatever was wrong with him, I think all the good parts got pushed to the side. Probably weren’t no gettin’ better, neither, with how long he’d been actin’ the way he was.”

“Probably not. Kinda felt like I was talkin’ to half of him that day. Although, I was kinda outta my mind on account of the blood loss and we hadn’t seen each other for damn near a decade, so who’s to say.”

“Lucky Sadie shot him, or he woulda caused all kindsa trouble.”

“No doubt.”

“Though sometimes I kinda – I kinda wish she hadn’t. If he’d have gotten away and we’d all just minded our own business.”

“Dutch didn’t know _how_ to mind his own business, he woulda roped us back in eventually. Somehow. Or come to kill us.”

“Maybe so,” John sighed. “So what was in Pearson’s box?”

“Ain’t looked.”

John blinked at Arthur, who didn’t move or look up at him. After a few seconds he felt a spark of frustration somewhere deep in his gut. It happened so quickly that it caught him off guard, and he couldn’t tamp it down. “Well, you gonna?”

“Dunno, maybe.”

“What d’you mean, maybe?”

“I mean _maybe_ , John. I dunno if I wanna look, I dunno what’s in there or if I wanna think about all that right at this exact second. Or if I wanna take it back home so Abigail can look and get upset about it.” Arthur’s tone ground into something rough and tense, the way it did when he started to get angry. The mood had shifted in just a few moments from something light and nostalgic to something liable to combust. John’s spark of frustration had kindled into full-blow defense, and he wasn’t sure why. It didn’t help that Arthur appeared to be as immediately agitated as he was by the turn in the conversation. And the fact that Arthur had brought up Abigail felt like he was using her against him, like he was accusing John of failing to do his part.

“Pretendin’ all of that didn’t happen won’t make it so,” John said, struggling to keep his voice even.

“I ain’t pretendin’.”

“Then I don’t see why-”

“Just _leave it_ ,” Arthur snapped, and John quieted immediately with the shock of it. He’d seen Arthur take that tone with other men – walk into their space and use it with his voice low and threatening. He had rarely had it turned on him and could count the number of times on one hand. It made him feel like a child, and he hated it, so he just scowled.

“I don’t know what your issue is, John. I really don’t. Why you gotta… _dwell_ on everything. It’s in the past and it oughta stay that way. You get so caught up thinkin’ about what happened that you don’t see what’s happening right in front of you, you just get mad and you get that way more often than not now. You take it out on me and that’s _fine_ , but on Abigail and Jack? Jack especially. Boy’s growin’ up, and he needs you to be here and be more than you are. If you don’t quit harpin’ on him and makin’ him feel less-than he’s just gonna get bitter about it.”

John stared at Arthur across the fire, feeling like he was being cornered, and he resorted to the same strategy he often used on Abigail without thinking about it. The words felt sharp on his tongue as they left his mouth.

“You tellin’ me how to raise my son, now?”

Arthur opened his mouth, face suddenly slack, and closed it again, and John watched his throat tense. He knew Arthur well enough to recognize anger, and a whole variety of emotions even if Arthur would rather bottle them up. But he didn’t know what _this_ was at all. When he’d spoken he expected Arthur to escalate and get so angry that he broke and they worked out their anger fucking in the tent or literally anything else that would make the conversation stop. But _this_ was unexpected. Whatever _this_ was, it was terrible.

When Arthur looked at him it got worse. When he spoke with a quiet tone, it got _impossibly_ worse.

“Didn’t realize you saw it that way. I distinctly remember you sayin’ I oughta think of him like _our_ son. The three of us. But I guess that ain’t the case.”

On second thought, John did know the look. It was the way Abigail had looked at him after they’d finished fighting when he’d come back, after he’d shaved and bathed. The way he imagined Dutch would have looked if he’d caught him riding off on Micah’s horse with all their cash, if he realized Abigail’s leaving him was a lie. The brief flicker he’d seen on Dutch’s face before he’d hit the ground. It was the bone-deep cold of discovering somebody you love has been lying to you.

“I didn’t mean-”

“I think you oughta stop talkin’, John, before we end up sayin’ something we don’t rightly intend to carry through.”

He tried his hardest to think of something that would fix what he’d said, and couldn’t, so he just looked at his hands, and couldn’t bring himself to look up as Arthur disappeared into the tent.

John sat for a few more hours, until the sun was long gone and there was nothing but the overwhelming drone of bugs and the occasional shift from inside the tent. He knew that he was careening wildly, that every aspect of him was out of control. That he was on the verge of making stupid choices that would destroy everything he’d worked to build, and those choices would be ones born from selfish and fearful intent. And he had never said something so purposefully hurtful to Arthur – he had no idea what he was doing. He needed to bind the wound a little, he thought. If it were Abigail they would just fight until there was nothing to fight about and she would temper that wildly careening part of him, but Abigail wasn’t there.

The tent really was only made for one person, which wasn’t normally an issue. Arthur didn’t seem to mind a part-time job as a mattress or a pillow. The man slept so heavily and soundly that John suspected he could fall asleep on rocks in a thunderstorm and have no problem waking up feeling rested the next morning and probably had done so, so the weight of another human must seem a comfort by comparison. But he had never faced down the prospect of crawling into an intimate position after having a conversation like the one he’d just had, because he had never pushed a conversation with Arthur into this territory.

He really wasn’t surprised, though, when he started to open the flap only to be met with a gruff, “If you open that I’ll kick you in the face.”

“We gotta finish, Arthur.”

There was silence, and John thought for a terrifying second that he wouldn’t be let into the tent. But then the sound of Arthur turning over in his bedding and a grunt of affirmation joined the cacophony of bugs, and John slipped inside. Arthur was on his side facing the half of tent wall closest to him and had compressed himself as much into the corner as he could in an effort to avoid touching John, and so John tried his best to give him space. He faced Arthur’s back, though, on his side behind him. The fire outside was mere minutes from extinguishing itself – just glowing embers. All he really saw of Arthur was a dim silhouette, and he was thankful for it. It was easier, somehow. It felt like talking to himself.

“I didn’t mean what I said, how I said it. You know I didn’t. I was just tryin’ to make you mad so you’d get distracted, not… hurt you, I guess.”

Arthur said nothing. John figured that was an invitation to keep going.

“I don’t understand how you don’t _miss_ everything. How it don’t drive you crazy stayin’ put. And I ain’t talkin’ like what we have, what Abigail and us have, like that ain’t enough because it is. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me, but it’s so… _quiet_. I wish I didn’t feel how I do, but I miss what it was like before. And it makes me mad that you don’t. It makes me mad that you’re a better father’n me and a better partner and that you don’t seem to be bothered one ounce quietin’ down or ever have the impulse to go back. You’re perfect, Arthur. At everything. And I – I just ain’t, and I can’t get away from bein’ reminded about it when I don’t know how to be anything other than what I am. And the fact you brought me out here to work out my extra energy like some stubborn horse as if that was gonna solve all my problems feels god damn condescending, to tell you the truth.”

“You finished?”

“I - yeah. Yeah, I guess I am.”

“Then shut up and go to sleep.”

“Arthur-”

“I got nothin’ to give you, John. All this is your problem and you’re puttin’ it on me. On all of us. This middle line you’re tryin’ to walk don’t work and it ain’t somethin’ we can live with. But John, whatever you pick you better do it fast before things change. It ain’t gonna be just the four of us forever and the longer you wait the worse you’re gonna make it for everybody. I know you think you’re tryin’, but you gotta try harder or stop tryin’ altogether. We ain’t gonna make it for you, ‘cause we’re always gonna choose you stayin’ and you’re always gonna half-ass whatever you feel like you’re bein’ made to do. So you gotta choose, and you gotta do it fast.”

John didn’t say anything, which was fine because he was pretty sure Arthur didn’t want a response. Arthur was telling him the lay of the land. Putting words to the things that Abigail wouldn’t tell him, but that he knew were true. He lingered, though, on Arthur’s words and felt like Arthur knew something that John didn’t. He often felt that way.

“I’m sorry, Arthur. I really didn’t mean Jack wasn’t yours as much as mine.”

“I know.”

“For the record,” he says, “you’re a much better father to the boy than I am.”

“Pathetic, considerin’ you got nearly five years of practice over me. I bet if you’d pull your head outta your ass you wouldn’t be so bad at it,” Arthur scoffed.

“Ain’t the only thing.”

Despite everything, Arthur let out a tired and somewhat amused puff of air. John leaned in to put his forehead against his back, and was relieved when he wasn’t shoved away. For a while he just lay there, shifting, not knowing what to do with his arms and unused to the negative feeling between the two of them, before Arthur spoke again. He mumbled, voice thick with sleep.

“Pick a spot to put your hands and quit movin’ around.”

He cleared his throat and set his hand on Arthur’s waist, sliding closer until he was pressed against his back. Arthur gripped his fingers and pulled them to settle over his stomach.

“Good?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Now, go the fuck to sleep.”

John nodded. He pressed himself tight against Arthur’s back, and closed his eyes. His dreams were disturbing, even though he couldn’t remember the specifics of them when he woke. Maybe it was the humidity, or the stress of his current situation, or the incessant hum of bugs in the thick southern air. He didn’t know. All he remembered was feeling like he was drowning and alone, over and over again.

It was sound that woke him more than light. John heard Arthur talking. It was distant. Not where it should be. There was no response to anything he was saying, and John forced his eyes open. Arthur wasn’t in the tent, but he couldn’t be far, and it wasn’t even really light outside yet. John turned on his back and gave himself a few moments before getting up and leaving to look for Arthur.

There was a tree a short distance from the camp. They’d past it the night before in favor of sleeping with more cover, in a thicker batch of trees. It was distant enough that he couldn’t make out anything Arthur was saying, but not so much that he couldn’t hear the drawl of his voice. Normally the sound was comforting, but that morning it filled him with dread. He didn’t like fighting with Arthur, he decided. Even after they resolved it he still felt guilty.

He made his way to join him, and the closer he got, the quieter Arthur became. He knew he was nearby, and the man was finishing up his conversation with a tree. John wondered if he’d stressed the man to the point of breaking, before realizing how dumb that was. Arthur was made of stone. John Marston’s petty insecurities hadn’t broken anything about him.

“Talkin’ to plants now?” John asked, sitting beside him. Arthur was tense, but he grunted at chuckled a little anyway.

“Live alone long enough in a forest, some habits get hard to break.”

Arthur had Pearson’s box in front of him. It was full of paper, mostly – clippings and books, a few photos. Chains and rings that John recognized as belonging to Dutch, and other small trinkets he didn’t recognize at all. Some of them looked like the strange things Arthur kept in his room and on his horse, talismans made of animal bits because at his core Arthur was a little superstitious even if he never talked about it. In his hand was a photo of three men, two of whom John recognized, and John, for once in his life, put together a small puzzle without having all of the pieces. He tore his eyes from the box and looked at the tree, patting a root in front of him.

“This Hosea?”

Arthur grunted an affirmation. “Buried him next to it so I could find him again when the marker became no more. Figured it’d take me a while to get back down here. Not that I can remember exactly where he was, but the tree’s good enough.”

“Wish I coulda met him.”

“Me, too. He woulda liked you. You’re dumb as a bag of rocks and he woulda teased you about it to hell and back, but he woulda liked you. He balanced out Dutch like that, y’know. Dutch’d support you until you did somethin’ dumb, and then he’d mock you so you didn’t do it again. Hosea’d tease you for bein’ dumb even when you weren’t and then when you really fucked up he’d be the best god damn sport about it as long as nobody got hurt. Hosea was real smart like that. About life in general. And the man loved a good story – probably wouldn’t like writin’ as much as I do if he hadn’t been involved – Dutch woulda strangled my enjoyment of it. It was always like that with them. Hell, Hosea woulda loved Jack and Abigail too. Jack especially. More’n he liked me, I reckon.”

“Somehow I doubt that’s true.”

“Maybe. I dunno. I miss him, John. Every day more’n more. Keep expectin’ it to get better, but now I just… wish he was here. All the time.”

Arthur’s fingers spanned the side of the box and he swallowed, and in the dim morning light John couldn’t help noticing how old he’d gotten, and how tired he looked. There was gray in his hair now and the lines by his eyes had gotten deeper. He had lines in his cheeks too, the ones that creased between his eyes and the corners of his mouth when he smiled. They crossed with the lines placed by his current expression – a furrowed brow, the smallest grimace. When he looked at John, John didn’t know what to make of it all.

“I didn’t open this box last night because I was afraid you’d see somethin’ in here that made you realize you miss that life more than you like the one you got now, and we’d lose you to those ghosts you like to dwell on.”

“Arthur, you ain’t-”

“You let me finish. You rambled on last night and now it’s my goddamn turn,” Arthur grimaced, sounding as tired as he looked. John shut his mouth, and Arthur sighed. “Listen. I remember how hard it was to choose leavin’. I missed it for a long time. I missed it and I felt guilty as hell for leavin’ everybody behind, Dutch especially. Under bein’ angry it was all guilt and feelin’ hurt and wishin’ I was somewhere else actin’ crazy. But you’re loyal to what matters, and I promised Hosea that I was gonna get out and stay out and that mattered to me more’n anything. And you’re at a place where gotta pick what matters to you more, John, and it scares the hell outta me because you ain’t been actin’ yourself for the last god damn year and a half and I don’t know what you’re gonna pick.”

John swallowed a lump in his throat and felt his eyes stinging. Arthur was watching him like… he didn’t know what. He was just watching quietly. Sadly, almost. John had to look away and stare at his hands. “What’d you mean last night, sayin’ that it ain’t just gonna be the four of us forever?”

“You ain’t stupid, what’d you think I meant.”

“Abigail pregnant?”

“She was afraid it was gonna scare you off if she told you. She was cryin’ about it before we left, woke me up. Told her I’d take you out here so you could sort yourself out.”

“How long’s she known?”

“Didn’t ask. Kinda blindsided me, if you wanna know the truth about it, and she was cryin’, so… How you feelin’ about that?”

“Don’t seem to be much difference between one and two kids to me, though I – I can understand why she was scared. How d’you feel about it?”

“God damn terrified. Jack’s one thing but a god damn baby is – and if it’s just…” He didn’t need to say it. The end of that sentence was _Abigail and me_ , and John knew it. Arthur paled visibly, and for a fleeting moment looked panicked. Lost. He shook it off and started again. “Look, John. If you don’t want this, you better leave. And I ain’t sayin’ that because I want you to go or because I’m tryin’ to make you feel bad, it’s just that it’ll be hard enough with Jack missin’ you, I can’t – you can’t do that to another kid, and Abigail-”

“I ain’t gonna. I ain’t – I couldn’t. I couldn’t do damn near anything without you two. I’m tryin’ to choose what we have, Arthur, I really am, it’s just god damn hard lettin’ go.”

“Try harder, then.”

John nodded, and chanced a look up at Arthur. He was still watching, looking sad and, John realized, frightened. He didn’t think he’d ever really seen Arthur frightened before. “Does it get easier?”

“Missing the old life?”

“Yeah.”

“Nothin’ in life gets easier, John. It just gets different. You just gotta set your mind to really wantin’ what you got.”

“Just be better.”

“Just be better,” Arthur said.

John thought back to that night in the cabin when Arthur had told him that, when everything was new and the prospect of a domestic life seemed oddly exciting. And he thought he could probably get back to that way of thinking if he really tried. It would take time, and knowing Arthur had once struggled in the same way changed things. It changed a lot of things. He swallowed, but held Arthur’s gaze. “It’s hard feelin’ like I’m the only one who ever fucked up. Or like you don’t miss raisin’ hell. I need you to help me out a little, Arthur. Whatever this was, what just happened, it – I need that more often.”

Arthur nodded. “You stop gettin’ mad for no reason, and I can do that.”

“Alright.”

Arthur held his gaze, and John thought he might die if it kept up so instead he held out his hand for the photo Arthur was holding. The man’s expression lightened a little, shifting to the kind of sad that John was more familiar with. A softer, fonder kind of sad. John looked at a photo of Dutch, young and clean-shaven, standing between a thin and handsome man with white-blond hair and an absolutely devastating version of the man who sat beside him. John gave a crooked grin and shook his head a little.

“You three wouldn’t’a needed to hold me up, I’da just thrown all my money at you. Christ. Handsome god damn devils, buncha heart-breakers.”

“Nah, that – that was mostly them. I didn’t do too much heart-breakin’. Mostly just got drunk and wild. Hollered a lot and went in guns blazin’.”

John shook his head, and thought it shouldn’t surprise him that Arthur was wildly oblivious to his own good looks. That was probably something that had always been the same – devastatingly handsome Arthur Morgan, awkward with all things having to do with himself. He absolutely would have pined over him like an idiot, had Arthur stayed in the gang. His young, hormone-addled brain would have made Arthur the center of his universe.

He felt a tug on his pant leg, and put his hand down to find Arthur’s under it. He gripped his fingers, hidden from view in the grass, and thought it was strange that he’d never told Arthur that he loved him. Arthur knew. He didn’t have to say it. He told himself he would one day, but Arthur hadn’t told him either, and he wasn’t sure it was necessary. He also wasn’t sure why it seemed like it would be hard to do.

“Think you mentioned somethin’ about a moose,” John said, clearing his throat of all of the feeling that had gathered there. He handed Arthur his photo, and gripped the hand in the grass. “Unless you wanna visit your pa more.”

Arthur huffed a little. “Hosea loved huntin’. He’d probably be rollin’ his eyes at me for spendin’ time sittin’ on my ass here while I could be trackin’ that beautiful beast.”

“Guess we better get a move on, then.”

Arthur nodded, and let John grip his hand again before he closed the box and got up to head back to camp. John lingered, sitting by the tree and feeling somehow but unhinged and grounded at the same time. He thought about thanking the bones he sat above for getting Arthur out alive, and he thought about apologizing. In the end he did neither, and just listened to the wind rustling the branches above him until Arthur hollered at him to get a move on, as if the last twelve hours had never happened at all. It was the same feeling he got after fighting with Abigail – the sensation of recovering from a wild gust of wind, of breathing without taking in any air and panicking before realizing everything was fine. Fights with Abigail were less painful than fights with Arthur, if it could even be called a fight. More like a catastrophic miscommunication between two people who rarely disagreed and were terrible at the language they needed to use. John thought he could get more fluent. They’d recovered pretty well, all things considered.

“Marston! You watchin’ grass grow? I ain’t gettin’ any younger.”

He pushed himself up to his feet, and turned away from the tree to sprint back to Arthur, who caught his weight without giving any ground. John crashed into him and fisted his shirt in his hands, kissed him hard and wild, and didn’t let Arthur have any room to protest. He knew Arthur lost his hat in the process, knew they were definitely at risk of being seen by prying eyes, and didn’t care about either. When he pulled away he thought he heard Arthur say he was a god damn force of nature, but he couldn’t be sure over the sound of his own breath and racing thoughts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this episode: John Marston, professional jackass.  
> In case you missed it in All of Them Wolves, I like... live for melodrama. Also commas and dashes mid-sentence.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All four chapters of this got posted in the last 12 hours, so if you're wondering, hey, where the heck did this come from, it's just that I posted it super fast!

Abigail had been eighteen when she met John, and he was only a couple years older than she was which had been something of a relief because the other men all had at least ten years on her. She felt like they were co-conspirators, a pair of wild animals delighted by each other’s company and by their own argumentative natures who thought they would live forever. John’s face when he’d realized just how good she was at picking pockets, how many skills she had beyond just being able to use her body, had filled her with a strange and heady pride and that pride stayed even though they were found out on that particular night and pursued – she could still feel the way her heart pounded as she clung to him and the thrill that surged through every inch of her body as they rode away. She had taken his gun from his holster and fired behind them in an effort to deter anybody following them too far, and he had laughed wildly and crowed. They’d fallen head over heels in love that night.

They had been very, very young.

Jack came a year later, and it was another year before the reality of their mortality crashed down upon her. She remembered that moment, too – she had been holding Jack as Dutch, Micah and Sean rode in to camp looking filthy and worse for the wear. Charles and John had been with them when they left her, and Dutch assured her that John was fine and Charles was collecting him. They’d just gotten separated, but it was fine. He said it over and over again in his most paternal voice as though that would make it true. Of course John had been fine, he had just been shot in the leg, and lucky for him Charles was capable. Charles also left shortly after that job went bad, but John seemed unaware of how near death he really was.

If John had died, the gang would have taken care of her because Jack was John’s son. But if John died, and then Abigail died, Jack would likely as not have been raised by Dutch, and in that moment she had thought of Jack growing up to be just like John – good at his core but violent and wild and without a clear future, constantly looking death in the eye without really knowing it over and over and over again. And in that moment, she aged ten years and nothing she wanted mattered. Jack needed better. Abigail had started talking to John about needing to get out and settle down after that.

She might have been harder on John than she should have been. In retrospect she blamed that on youth and fear – she’d come to that place of knowing fast, and it had taken John longer to get there and so the pressure she’d put on him had seemed immense. Abigail didn’t regret it – it was probably the only reason they had actually gotten out, because it would have taken John years to grow up. He was still struggling to do it.

One night, she’d caught him trying to run. Jack was just over two years old, and John’s leg was recently healed, and her deep need to get out and refusal to enjoy any of the wild things she once had were making him feel trapped and panicked. He told her this after she’d chased him down using one of the spare horses – told her she’d changed, and that he hadn’t signed up for what she was giving him. Abigail had wanted to scream at him for being a selfish idiot, but for once she didn’t – she calmed her voice, even though her fingers still clenched and shook, and told him that she hadn’t changed. That she missed being that wild animal, but she had put it aside and mourned it in seconds because Jack didn’t have a choice, and he needed her to care for him. John had understood her point of view, however reluctantly, and after a few more hours of tense conversation they had gone back to camp together. He struggled with the concept that she could miss what she’d had and want to move on at the same time – he still did.

John knew that people died. He’d seen it happen, lost people himself. Abigail had lost count of the times he’d almost died, and she’d only known him for a third of his life so who knew what other idiot situations he’d almost died in before they met. And yet somehow, he didn’t seem to fear it. It was part of his childishness, she thought – a cocky confidence that even though it could happen to him, it wouldn’t. Although it was beyond childishness, because when Jack touched something that was too hot and hurt him he learned not to touch that thing again, and John apparently lacked that natural survival instinct.

Abigail rarely actually thought John was stupid, but she struggled to wrap her mind around the fact that he couldn’t comprehend the two very basic facts of life: everybody died eventually, and sometimes you had to give up the fun things in preference for the practical ones. All she could figure was that John was just a selfish man. A good man at his core, but selfish in the way a child was. John just wanted to have fun. He reminded her of wild tricksters in the stories Dutch had read aloud to Jack. But he tried, and she figured the least she could do was try and pull him up when he fell even if he hated it and it made her feel like all she did was nag him. They’d get to the same place eventually.

Arthur knew he could die. He saw it very practically, in a very utilitarian sort of way, and she knew he’d come to the acceptance of that truth brutally. That he had had a child and a partner before who had died, and that he had been too young and wild to care for them in the way he should have, and it must have sobered him. He’d shared that with her when she’d been divulging her frustrations with John early on in their relationship, but he hadn’t gone into many details or talked about himself much at all. It was that way for most things. They didn’t talked in detail about his life before she’d met him – just little things here and there when they were alone, because he was afraid talking about the gang made her uncomfortable – but she knew _him_ , and knew that the reality of death must have felt like running into a wall. Knowing he could have done more, and didn’t, and there were real consequences.

A very, very small part of her wished she’d gotten to know Arthur when she was younger. Small, because she knew in order to do that he would have had to stay in the gang. But they would have been the best of friends. They understood each other in a quiet and comforting kind of way that Abigail had never experienced before. She felt like she’d known him her whole life. He never had to explain himself, and she didn’t either The silence that stood between them was the most satisfying thing.

Arthur balanced out her relationship with John so that it was tolerable – she imagined without that counterbalance she’d be finding white hairs already. John slipped from her fingers as soon as she thought he had him and left her gasping for air, hair a mess and heart fluttering like she’d just been caught in a gust of wind on the plains. If John was a wind storm, Arthur was a pillar of stone, and she loved him desperately for that. Where John’s love was loud and thrilling, Arthur’s was quiet and steady. Arthur was reliable and, for as much as he denied it, wise. Both her boys were smart, she thought, but John was foolish. Arthur was wise. She wasn’t sure it was something that came with age, and thought it might just be his nature. A good, wise man.

The room was light enough to see, as the cool pre-dawn light filtered in through the curtains. Just bright enough for Arthur to draw. She heard the scratch of lead on paper first, and stayed still for a few moments before she opened her eyes to peer at Arthur over her shoulder. He wasn’t looking at her, but his position made it obvious that he had been. Abigail suspected that he was drawing her and John, and wondered what he saw when he looked at them – his drawings were always mostly realistic, but something about them was also very… Abigail couldn’t quite name it. They felt very true to him.

She felt John’s chin against the top of her head, felt his heart beating under her cheek and tested her calves against the blankets that tangled their legs together. The way she was situated she knew Arthur had once been part of the tangle. She’d woken up like that before, pressed against John how she was with Arthur’s head on her hip. Gently, she removed herself from John’s embrace and sat up straight. Arthur didn’t look at her, but his mouth twitched up into a soft smile. He’d been handsome before, Abigail thought, but he was getting handsomer by the day. Weathered, and sturdy, and warm.

Arthur didn’t move as Abigail shifted and pressed herself against his side, leaning in to look at his work. He never stopped her from looking at whatever page he was on, and she appreciated the openness of that. The drawing he was working on was a good likeness – she recognized herself and John immediately, and thought that they looked a little like they’d become the same person in the drawing. Her stomach was hidden by the angle, and she couldn’t help thinking that in a few months that pose would look noticeably different. She kissed Arthur’s shoulder, and felt glad that he’d brought John home with him and broken the news on her behalf.

They hadn’t come back with any moose, although John had plenty of wild stories for Jack about how he and Uncle Arthur had seen one big as a mountain and white as snow and tracked it for miles until a cougar had crossed their paths and they had to fight it tooth and nail. Neither of them really looked like they’d fought off a cougar, and Abigail had strongly suspected that if there had been one at all Arthur had spotted and shot it before it had made a meal out of John being an oblivious ass as he usually was and probably scared off their prize game in the process. She’d been wrong - the cougar wasn’t a cougar at all, and it was men they’d found who had meant them harm, but she didn’t like to think about that. She’d spent two weeks resolutely not thinking about the roaming gangs they’d encounter, or the terrifying conversations they’d have, or the fact that John might not come back with Arthur at all. Of course, John had come back. He had caught her as she leapt off the porch, and whispered _I love you_ s into her ear.

“You never draw yourself with us in these,” she said, brushing her fingers up Arthur’s forearm. He’d come back with cuts there, souvenirs that told her he had indeed met a man with a knife and not a wild cat at all. But he was home, and that was what was important.

“Guess it never occurred to me,” he said, quiet and amused next to her. “Never really draw myself at all.”

Abigail hummed, and thought that she’d keep note of which book this was. Arthur saved all of his old journals, and she’d never looked through them but if he ever made to get rid of any of them she’d take the drawing from this one. She’d started collecting things in her domestic life – pressed all the flower chains Jack had made for her in a bible she’d never really read, kept all the feathers he’d brought her. She had a box where she put all her letters from John, and all the ones Arthur had sent her before they had met. There were photos from their past life too, which Arthur had somehow procured on their two-week trip, which she quietly tucked away in the same box. Most of them were faces she knew, some she didn’t, but those ones mattered to Arthur and so she loved them, too. And now with context for with it, holding the picture she’d once seen in Dutch’s tent of him with Hosea and Arthur held a certain weight. She had to fight the urge to leave that one out and viewable, even if Dutch was in it.

She looked away from the drawing up to Arthur’s face. He watched her calmly, mouth soft and expression somehow curious. Absently, Abigail though she liked him best that way – intrigued by the world and people around him. He could pretend he was tough as nails, but she knew the truth. Arthur Morgan was _sweet_. Abigail touched his jaw with her fingers, and watched his eyes flutter for a second before leaning in to kiss him. She heard the book close, felt his hand on her lower back, and heard John exhale quietly behind her. It wasn’t such a bad way to wake up, she thought, as the bed behind her shifted and she felt John’s lips on her shoulder. Not a bad way at all.

When she’d had both of them and left them breathless, she told Arthur she was taking his horse riding because she was smaller and more tolerant than Rachel, and that no, she didn’t need help saddling her, before she dressed and set out. Her days riding horseback were limited now. Her days having any time to herself were the same – especially without a whole gang to help, most of her time would be spent with this new child once it was born. She had a few years before Jack was really old enough to assist. The thought of Jack with a sibling brought a smile to her lips, though, and warmed her just like it warmed her to think of John cradling the newcomer in his arms or how small it would seem in Arthur’s massive hands. As she saddled Viviane and set off, she thought about what the kid would look like and how quickly they’d be able to tell which of them had been involved in the making of it. She’d been so caught up in fear that the news would cause John to bolt again that she hadn’t had time to wonder about such things and now that relief had found her she figured she didn’t much care who the father was. Abigail instead found herself struck at the oddness of the whole thing, and wondered how many other people had found themselves in her situation.

She into the mountains, back towards where she knew Arthur’s cabin to be. It was a place she’d never actually been – by the time she’d moved into the house, Arthur’s things were no longer there and there was no cause to go look. And then she’d see where Arthur’s scar was, remembered how wide and sharp Micah’s blade was and thought how deep it must have gone, and realized how much he must have bled and how certain his death must have seemed, and didn’t think she wanted to see the cabin at all. But now time had passed, and she had a dull curiosity that morning that she couldn’t quiet.

It was easy enough to find, about two miles back into the hills and built in a natural clearing that was now covered in moss and ferns. A tree had fallen, caving the roof in and crushing the pen behind the house. Hitching the horse to a tree, knowing full well it was used enough to wildlife not to spook and run, Abigail walked towards Arthur’s old home feeling light and dreamy. She walked in front of the steps that led now to a useless door, and lingered where she thought Dutch must have died. Imagined John crouched down on the ground, just to the side, where he must have seen Dutch’s face when he hit the ground. Walking around to the side of the house, Abigail found a spot where the tree had brought the wall down enough that by squeezing between a branch and the planks of the cabin she could fit herself inside. She wasn’t entirely sure why she felt the need to see it, and knew she’d be angry at herself later as she washed the dirt from the venture out of her skirts, but at the moment it seemed important.

Inside the cabin everything felt still. The morning light left strange shapes through the moss and branches, and made the spot where Arthur had sat bleeding harder to find. If the wood had been wet she might not have seen it, but everything was dry and crisp and the stain, old as it was, was still there. Abigail walked carefully and felt her skin prickling, felt a shiver up her spine, standing where she thought he must have fallen after he was stabbed. Against a corner, like a wounded animal. The stain disappeared under moss, but it was deep enough to make Abigail wonder how red John’s clothes must have been as he rode back with Arthur. John must have burnt them after. She hoped he had.

Abigail didn’t know how long she stood there thinking about all of the things she might not have. It was both hard and incredibly easy to think of the specific ways that things would be different if Arthur hadn’t survived. She knew he’d have left John the property, and once she’d thought John wouldn’t have had the capacity to build her a house. But Sadie and Charles would have helped him, would have seen Arthur’s last wishes through, and she and John would have moved in. John might not have stayed very long. Might not have come back as quickly. Although, she thought, he probably would have, because for as wild and boundless as her John was he loved her and he loved Jack. Maybe in that other life, she and John and Jack just lived on, John with a sadness to him that she didn’t understand and her never really thinking life could be any fuller with as full as it felt already. Maybe they died that way, old and peaceful, or maybe John brought trouble to their door again. Trouble would be so much easier to handle with Arthur to help.

The thought made her stomach clench a little, and she pressed a hand there to steady herself, and remembered to breathe. The world was full of what-ifs she wasn’t particularly fond of, but often they didn’t seem like they were narrowly avoided. These did. They had been very, very narrowly avoided. Abigail trailed her boot over the edge of the stain she could see, and decided it was enough time spent thinking on it.

She was so preoccupied extricating herself from the cabin that she didn’t notice anybody outside, so when the man in a fine black suit and a tall top hat said, “Fine morning,” she couldn’t help but scream and jump.

He raised his hands in apology as she gathered herself and sprung back towards the horse, clutching the fabric at her waist, shaking from the surprise. “Sorry to scare you, Abigail Roberts… is it Marston or Morgan? Or Callahan? I think I lost track, myself, somewhere along the way. In any case, it wasn’t my intention.”

Abigail blinked and let her hands fall to her sides in clenched fists. The air around her still felt still and dreamy, and the birds all felt very far away. “Do I know you?”

“Oh, we’ve crossed paths a few times. I don’t expect you remember me very well. People usually don’t. They’re usually preoccupied.”

“What are you – what are you doing out here? Sneaking up on folks like that,” she swallowed, and looked back towards the shotgun on the horse’s saddle. It would be a challenge, but she could grab it pretty quickly if the man made a move she didn’t like.

As it was, he didn’t seem to be particularly aggressive. He watched her in a strange way she didn’t care for, but he was casual and calm in his movement and seemed to be moving further away from her. He let his heel drag over the spot she thought Dutch must have died in, and looked about in vague interest. “Just passing through. I have some business in the area to attend to, and thought I’d check in. Do a little… sight seeing.”

He paused, and then looked at her and added, “I’m an accountant,” like it should mean something to her. She wasn’t sure what to say to that, so she stayed put, and he looked her over.

“How do you know John?”

“Oh, we go way back, John and I. And forward, depending on how you look at it. We’re practically old business partners.”

“John ain’t one for math.”

“Accounting, Ms. Roberts, accounting. He usually ends up pretty good at that. Arthur’s more of a natural, though,” the man smiled a little, and Abigail felt herself shiver again.

Somewhere in the back of her head, she heard Dutch’s voice ask her if she’d felt somebody walk over her grave. He must have asked her before – she tried to think back to when he had, when the last time she’d had this feeling was, and couldn’t put her finger on it. She wondered if she’d seen this strange man then, too. Abigail moved another step back towards Viviane, who didn’t seem particularly bothered. “Where do I know you from?”

The man only watched. “Trust me, we’ve met before. We’ll meet again. Maybe not for some time – you’ve gotten very lucky, although I don’t suppose I need to tell you that. You be careful on the way back home now, Abigail. There’s all kinds of wild animals around.”

“I can handle a few wild animals.”

“I know you can,” he said, and the tone wasn’t particularly kind but it was warm in a way that she didn’t like. Familiar. Abigail gripped the horse’s reigns and watched as he turned and began to walk into the woods. “Tell John hello for me.”

He walked behind a tree, didn’t reappear afterwards. He just vanished. Birds grew louder. Abigail felt like she hadn’t noticed all the air disappearing, but it had come back all at once and now her heart was pounding in her ears. She would _not_ tell John anything about what had just happened. She wasn’t even sure what she had seen.

Viviane flinched at the sound of wolves somewhere in the distance. Maybe miles away, the howling carried down the hills to them. Maybe waiting for her on the ride home, lining the road and following her scent. Setting her jaw, she mounted Arthur’s horse, made sure the shotgun was loaded, and left the cabin and the strange man behind as she rode home to her boys. Abigail didn’t spare another thought for the wolves after that – unlike most of the men she’d known, wolves normally only bothered people if they were desperate. The ones she heard, she thought, sounded more like they were trying to find one of their own.

At home, Arthur is dressed and already two cups of coffee into the day. He has Jack on his lap, and they practice letter forms together. He can read much better than either Jack or Abigail, and Abigail knows he writes beautifully because once when John was gone he read to her from one of his old journals like he wanted to prove his commitment to her with that intimacy. Jack is in good hands in many regards. The child that’s coming will be, too. Arthur will teach it to read and write, and ride, and love animals and shoot a gun and stick to its choices. He’ll speak calm and soft to it, and stand protective and steady, and worry that he’s not doing enough. He’ll tell her this quietly every so often, when it’s just the two of them, and she’ll laugh because there’s no universe in which Arthur Morgan doesn’t do enough for the people he gives his loyalty to.

John is awake, too, and cooking. John is a good cook, somehow, despite the fact that he can barely remember to dress himself – more and more he cooks dinner with her because she’s awful at it, but also she thinks because he enjoys it. He rarely cooks breakfast, though, because he and Arthur start work very early. But she’s not there, she’s riding through the woods, cataloging all the ways her life could be different and worse, and so John cooks breakfast. He’ll do it more and more, she thinks, as she gets later into her pregnancy because her last had been hard in ways not many experienced. There was never enough food, and work was difficult, and everyone was desperate and afraid all the time. John is good in his core, and will want her to sleep because she finally has a bed to do it in, and when the child is born he’ll cook because he knows it's helpful.

As the ranch comes into view, Abigail decides not to tell anybody about the accountant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This whole stupid thing exists because I found a few Strange Man easter eggs on my second playthrough and lost my shit completely, like a total nerd. If you guys don't remember him/didn't play the "I Know You" missions in RDR1, he's fate/death/god/the devil/something spooky that shows up to put John through his moral paces, and who John tries (and fails due to spooky circumstances) to shoot. He knows a LOT about John, but John only has an eerie sensation that they've met before, and he gives no information about himself but that he's an accountant of sorts. If you want to know more about the weirdo at the end, you can check out all the parts of RDR1 with him here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9L5Jnq5MYs  
> If I update this series again, it will be with some straightforward, good old-fashioned porn and not four chapters' worth of melodrama and John being an asshole.


End file.
